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FREE SHAME AND THE CAPTIVES PDF Thomas Keneally | 392 pages | 10 Apr 2014 | Hodder & Stoughton General Division | 9781444781281 | English | London, United Kingdom Shame and the Captives by Thomas Keneally – book review | Books | The Guardian Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Shame and the Captives by Tom Keneally. Shame and the Captives by Tom Keneally. Thomas Keneally. Based on true events, this beautifully rendered novel from the author of Schindler's List and The Daughters of Mars brilliantly explores a World War II prison camp, where Japanese prisoners resolve to take drastic action to wipe away their shame. Alice is a young woman living on her father-in-law's farm on the edge of an Australian country town, while her Shame and the Captives is held pr Based Shame and the Captives true events, this beautifully rendered novel from the author of Schindler's List and The Daughters of Mars brilliantly explores a World War II prison camp, where Japanese prisoners resolve to Shame and the Captives drastic action to wipe away their shame. Alice is a young woman living on her father-in-law's farm on the edge of an Australian country town, while her husband is held prisoner in Europe. When Giancarlo, an Italian anarchist at the prisoner-of-war camp down the road, is assigned to work on the Shame and the Captives, she hopes that being kind to him will somehow influence her husband's treatment. What she doesn't anticipate is how dramatically Giancarlo will expand her outlook and self-knowledge. But what most challenges Alice and her fellow townspeople is the utter foreignness of the thousand-plus Japanese inmates and their culture, which the camp commanders fatally misread. Mortified by being taken alive in battle and preferring a violent death to the shame of living, they plan an outbreak, to shattering and far-reaching effects on Shame and the Captives the citizens around them. In a career spanning half a century, Thomas Keneally has proved a master at exploring ordinary lives caught up in extraordinary events. With this profoundly gripping and thought-provoking novel, inspired by a notorious incident in New South Wales inhe once again shows why he is celebrated as a writer who looks into the heart of the human condition with a piercing intelligence that few can match. Get A Copy. Hardcoverpages. Published February 24th by Atria Books first published More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Shame and the Captivesplease sign up. How does it compare with 'After darkness' by Christine Piper? See 1 question about Shame and the Captives…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Shame and the Captives. Marvelous storytelling and character development that shines a light for me on the relativism of morality in the time of war. The tale brings to life the odd historical event of a massive prison break Shame and the Captives Japanese POWs at a small town in New South Wales in We get a window on the lives of the British and Australians running the camp, the program of work in the community set up for trustworthy prisoners, and the accommodation of local farmers and the town to the camp and prisoners they encoun Marvelous storytelling and character development that shines a light for me on the relativism of morality in the time of war. We get a window on the lives of the British Shame and the Captives Australians running the camp, the program of work in the community set up for trustworthy prisoners, and the accommodation of local farmers and the town to the camp and prisoners they encounter. All are flawed in their distorted understanding of each other, and all struggle under our judging vision to show us some kind of honor on the home front while the madness of war rages elsewhere. She kindly serves lemonade to Japanese prisoners who are laboring on shoveling rocks on the roadway. Her action is like a prayer that somewhere someone will be similarly kind to her husband. But the prisoners appear sullen and reticent to accept such special comfort and seem dangerous because of their close supervision by armed soldiers. Colonel Abercare is a career British soldier too old and ineffectual to attain a battlefield command. Major Suttor is an Australian reservist, who despises the imperial pomposity of the Brits and from his experience writing for a radio show equivalent of a soap opera feels he feels he is attuned to common man. Their interplay was very engaging to me. They are at odds on how to handle the implacable Japanese prisoners, who resist any form of cooperation or even human communication. Our representative jailers, who daily face the smoldering resentment of their charges, are highly motivated to keep things under civilized control: Abercare from his ambitions to advance in rank and to keep in good graces with his estranged, aristocratic wife; Suttor to satisfy the watchful eyes of the Red Cross inspectors so that his own son will not be mistreated as a Japanese POW. Thus, we are set up for a tragedy, with the elusiveness of power and control as a trickster and shame as a hidden force. Through the perspectives of two Japanese characters, one a young elite fighter pilot Tengan and the other an older infantry sergeant AokiI finally got a glimmer of understanding of a mindset that has baffled me after a wide diversity of readings. How Shame and the Captives understand the kamikaze pilots, the bushido samurai spirit of honor in fighting to Shame and the Captives last man, or the thousands of Japanese soldiers who would leap off cliffs at Saipan rather than surrender? Instead, we get here a much more comprehensible perspective of individual variations in personality and loyalty to the larger cause. As Alice gets to Shame and the Captives this Giancarlo while teaching him English, she is relieved to learn he was not a Fascist. He explains that he is an anarchist, which she has trouble comprehending: States make war. Therefore, no states, no war. Absolute rubbish. This interest is very dangerous for Giancarlo, and her selfish attempts Shame and the Captives exert power over him makes for a fascinating analog for corrupted humanity as a collateral damage of this war. How the outbreak of the Japanese comes to intersect their moral wrestling makes for a surprising and moving resolution to the drama of this story. This book was provided by the publisher through the Netgalley program. View all 14 comments. Most Australians of a certain age have heard of the Cowra Breakout. This was the largest prison escape of World War II. During the escape Shame and the Captives the manhunt that followed, Japanese soldiers and four Australian soldiers were killed. Many of the Japanese soldiers who died were either ki Most Australians of a certain age have heard of the Cowra Breakout. Many of the Japanese soldiers who died were either killed by other prisoners or committed suicide. All of the surviving escapees were captured and imprisoned. There were no civilian casualites, the escapees having been ordered by their leaders not to harm Australian civilians. In fictionalising the Cowra Breakout story, Keneally doesn't stray far from history, even though Cowra becomes Gawell and the names of the main players are changed. The narrative focuses on the camp commandant, the officer in charge of that part of the camp from which the escape Shame and the Captives, a young married woman whose husband is a prisoner of war in Europe, an Italian prisoner and several of the Japanese prisoners. Keneally is at his best when exploring Shame and the Captives motivation of the Japanese escapees. These are men for whom captivity equals Shame and the Captives and who are convinced that the only way in which they can achieve honour is through death. In effect, the escape was a group suicide attempt. However, a real strength of the novel is that Keneally doesn't generalise: the Japanese soldiers are as individual as the other characters. The most signficant weakness of the work is its pace. The set up, with its introduction to the various characters is reasonably slow and the middle of the novel drags somewhat. However, the build up and aftermath of the escape are worth the wait. Overall, this is an interesting work Shame and the Captives a favourite theme of Keneally's: cultural misunderstanding in all its forms. This work is both more conventional and less moving than that novel. However, this is still a novel worth reading. Apr 18, Bettie Shame and the Captives it it was ok Shelves: springhistorical- fictionaustraliaprisonerwwiipublishedtragedybettie-s-law-of-excitement-lostsnoozefestjapan. Sure felt as if Keneally did just that with this one. Shame and the Captives lacked both spark and enthusiasm, however I did learn a lot by engaging with this book as it sent me scurrying to the interwebz to look up the gen. View all 3 comments. I wanted to read this because I loved other books by this author most notably Schindler's List and most recently The Daughters Shame and the Captives Mars. I was taken by the author's noteswriting and thoughts at the beginning.